At Prospect Lithium Zimbabwe’s operation, the country’s only completed lithium sulphate plant exposes the tension between an industrial deadline and the capacity available to meet it.
The plant is designed around material from the company’s own concentrator and has no spare capacity for other producers. Two other sulphate projects, at Bikita and Kamativi, were still under construction in July 2026 and were not expected to be operating before the beginning of 2027.
Zimbabwean ministers have repeatedly announced that lithium concentrate exports will be prohibited from January 2027. Unless additional processing capacity becomes available, producers without sulphate plants may require extensions, shared facilities, or toll processing to comply.
The gap reveals a recurring weakness in Africa’s mineral industrial policy. Across the continent, governments are using cobalt quotas, lithium export restrictions, railway investment and rare-earth projects to capture more value from critical minerals. The four case studies that follow show progress in supply control, intermediate processing and transport infrastructure.
When viewed together, however, they paint a less convincing picture of African ownership, technological capability, skilled employment, local procurement, or downstream manufacturing.
More processing does not always mean more power.
The demand for critical minerals continued to rise in 2024, driven by their growing use in electric vehicles, battery storage, electricity networks, renewable energy systems and advanced manufacturing. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), lithium demand increased by almost 30 per cent, while demand for nickel, cobalt, graphite and rare earths rose between 6 and 8 per cent.
Supply chains nevertheless became more concentrated. The IEA’s 2025 outlook found that the average share held by the three largest refining countries for six major energy-transition minerals rose from about 82 per cent in 2020 to 86 per cent in 2024. Almost 90 per cent of refined supply growth came from the leading supplier in each market: Indonesia for nickel, and China for cobalt, graphite and rare earths.
Mining is only the beginning of those supply chains. Crushing and concentrating ore may increase the value of mineral exports without producing battery-grade chemicals. Lithium sulphate, for example, still requires conversion into lithium carbonate or hydroxide, while separated rare-earth oxides must undergo metallisation, alloying and magnet manufacturing before becoming finished components.
A country may therefore host a processing plant while importing the technology, chemicals, and senior expertise, granting substantial fiscal concessions, and selling its output to a related foreign buyer.
Industrial value, therefore, should be judged by what remains in the producing economy, including public revenue, ownership, technical knowledge, skilled employment, local procurement, and control over later stages of production. Environmental liabilities and community costs must also be counted.
According to United States Geological Survey (USGS) data, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the world’s leading cobalt producer and a major copper producer. At the same time, Zambia is also an important producer of both minerals. Zimbabwe is a major lithium producer, Guinea leads global bauxite production, and Namibia is an important producer of uranium and lithium. Mozambique and Madagascar are significant graphite producers, with Madagascar also producing nickel and cobalt. South Africa leads global production of manganese and platinum, while rare-earth projects are advancing at Lofdal in Namibia and Phalaborwa in South Africa.
Africa’s critical minerals have become central to a wider geopolitical contest over global supply chains. The United States and the European Union are supporting alternative transport and processing projects through the Minerals Security Partnership and the European Union’s Global Gateway. China, meanwhile, remains deeply involved in refining, mining, and infrastructure.
The bigger question is whether African governments can use this competition to build processing capacity, strengthen local supply chains and gain greater control over production.
DRC: Market leverage without proven industrial transformation.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo suspended cobalt exports in February 2025 after rapid supply growth contributed to a steep price decline. It replaced the suspension with an export-quota system in October.
The strategic-minerals regulator set an annual export ceiling of 96,600 tonnes for 2026 and 2027, comprising a base allocation of 87,000 tonnes and a strategic reserve of 9,600 tonnes under its control. Company allocations were based largely on historical production and shipment data. The restrictions tightened supply and were followed by a price recovery. Reuters reported that cobalt prices rose from about $10 a pound before the suspension to approximately $24 in December 2025.
A quota can support an international price while leaving the country’s economic role largely unchanged. The unresolved questions are whether Congolese exporters received better realised prices, whether public revenue increased, and whether the policy encouraged refining or domestic ownership.
Implementation exposed documentation and logistics delays. In June 2026, the regulator moved to withdraw unused first-half allocations.
Exporters were required to prepay a 10 per cent mining royalty before shipments. That may strengthen or accelerate collection, but it does not by itself demonstrate additional public revenue. Ministry of Finance data would be needed to establish how much was received.
Resource Matters has warned that controlling exports is only one step and that the deeper challenge is converting cobalt wealth into employment, industrialisation, electricity access and stronger public services. Without those changes, the country remains exposed to mineral-price volatility even when production rises.
A 2025 assessment commissioned by the DRC Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative also found delays in community-development agreements, limited access to environmental-impact studies and persistent gaps in the payment and disclosure of the mandatory 0.3 per cent turnover contribution.
Those governance gaps are visible in Kolwezi. In a 2023 report, Amnesty International and the Congolese rights group Initiative pour la Bonne Gouvernance et les Droits Humains documented the case of Edmond Musans. The 62-year-old resident dismantled his home as a copper and cobalt mine expanded. “We did not ask to be moved,” he said. Musans later joined a committee representing more than 200 households seeking better compensation. The operator, Compagnie Minière de Musonoie Global SAS, said it aimed to improve communication with affected residents.
The export-quota framework has strengthened state influence over legally exportable supply. Available evidence has not shown corresponding increases in Congolese refining, ownership, local procurement, community payments or technical control.
Zimbabwe’s captive processing problem
In December 2022, Zimbabwe prohibited exports of lithium-bearing ores and unbeneficiated lithium, subject to exemptions. In February 2026, the government temporarily suspended exports of raw minerals and lithium concentrate before allowing shipments to resume under quotas and additional conditions.
Mining companies have asked for more time to complete processing plants, raising questions about whether existing capacity will be sufficient when the January 2027 deadline takes effect.
Prospect Lithium Zimbabwe, a wholly owned subsidiary of Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, has moved beyond concentrate production with a $400 million lithium sulphate plant capable of producing 50,000 tonnes annually.
The company told Reuters that the plant can process only material from its own concentrator, leaving no capacity for third-party producers. Meanwhile, sulphate plants under construction at Bikita and Kamativi were not expected to be operational before the beginning of 2027.
Zimbabwe’s spodumene-concentrate exports increased from 1.014 million tonnes in 2024 to 1.128 million tonnes in 2025. Revenue nevertheless declined slightly, from approximately $514.5 million to $513.8 million, as prices weakened.
The deadline may encourage investment by removing the easier export option. But processing plants still depend on reliable electricity, finance, chemical inputs, skilled workers and adequate processing capacity.
If sufficient capacity is not operating, the government may face pressure to phase implementation, authorise toll processing or grant extensions. Clear public exemption criteria would reduce uncertainty and limit the scope for discretionary enforcement.
What happens between the mine and the port?
On 3 July 2026, Africa Finance Corporation announced financial close on a $753 million package for the 1,300-kilometre railway and port concession in Angola. The package includes $553 million from the United States International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and $200 million from the Development Bank of Southern Africa.
The planned extensions through Zambia and the DRC remain separate and less advanced. Africa Finance Corporation was seeking between $3 billion and $5 billion for new railway sections in both countries, with financial close targeted for late 2027 and completion around 2030.
European Union programmes linked to the wider corridor include trade facilitation, training, renewable energy, agriculture and biodiversity protection. The programmes extend beyond transport, but have not yet produced operating refineries or component manufacturing.
The Tanzania–Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) provides an eastern alternative. China, Tanzania and Zambia signed a $1.4 billion modernisation agreement in September 2025 under a planned concession. The agreement covers track rehabilitation, workshops, locomotives, passenger coaches and wagons. What remains insufficiently public is how tariffs, freight access, local procurement and operating obligations will be implemented.
Both routes could lower transport costs while leaving high-value processing outside the mineral-producing countries.
A railway alone cannot create an industrial corridor. It also requires processing plants, engineering suppliers, technical institutions, reliable power, efficient customs systems and affordable access for firms beyond the largest mining companies.
Africa Finance Corporation estimates that the proposed Zambia-Lobito railway could create more than 1,250 jobs across construction and operations, generate about $3 billion in economic benefits and reduce emissions by approximately 300,000 tonnes a year. It remains unclear how jobs, freight capacity, contracts and benefits would be distributed.
The question is whether cheaper transport becomes an input into regional production or merely makes extraction and export more efficient.
South Africa’s broader industrial base
South Africa’s mining services companies, engineering firms, laboratories and research institutions provide a broader platform for advanced processing than is visible in the other three cases.
Its Critical Minerals and Metals Strategy acknowledges that many domestic mineral value chains remain concentrated upstream. The strategy focuses on six pillars: geoscience mapping and exploration; value addition and localisation; research and development and building a skilled workforce; infrastructure and energy security; financial instruments to support local beneficiation; and harmonisation of the regulatory and policy framework.
The Phalaborwa rare earth project in South Africa tests whether that foundation can support a higher-value role in rare-earth processing. Rainbow Rare Earths says the project would recover rare-earth elements from approximately 35 million tonnes of phosphogypsum left by historical phosphate processing, at a reported average grade of 0.44 per cent total rare-earth oxides.
Rainbow holds an 85 per cent interest and has an option over the remainder. It plans to produce separated neodymium-praseodymium oxide and says process development has involved Mintek and pilot facilities in South Africa and the United States.
The company describes parts of the process as its intellectual property but has not explained how licensing costs, operating expertise and process knowledge would be distributed once commercial production begins. The DFC has proposed investing up to $50 million in equity through TechMet. The proposed investment would not fully finance the project.
In a regulatory update on 1 July 2026, Rainbow said 75 per cent of the flowsheet had moved into the engineering phase of the definitive feasibility study, while final optimisation of the solvent-extraction circuit was continuing. The project still had to secure full financing, move through construction and begin commercial production. First production was still targeted for 2028.
The project would go beyond producing a mixed concentrate, but the further stages needed for permanent magnets are not included in the current South African plans. The company also says it would neutralise acidic water from the historical phosphogypsum stacks, reuse water in a closed circuit and deposit processed gypsum on lined facilities.
Environmental and social studies were still under way, so those claims had yet to be tested in commercial operation. It also says it will prioritise local workers and suppliers, but it has not quantified permanent employment, local procurement or the number of technical and managerial positions likely to be held locally.
Phalaborwa is therefore a promising attempt to establish rare-earth separation rather than proof of an operating mine-to-magnet value chain.
The environmental and social ledger
The value retained from critical minerals cannot be measured only through export prices, processing stages and tax receipts. Mining and processing can create water pollution, tailings risks, land pressures, unsafe work and community displacement. South Africa’s own critical-minerals strategy acknowledges the historical links between mining, environmental degradation, displacement, health damage, illegal mining and inequality.
The DRC’s cobalt policy should be assessed alongside traceability, artisanal-mining formalisation and community revenue. Zimbabwe’s lithium policy should also be assessed against evidence on water use, energy demand, waste management and impacts on affected communities. Lobito and TAZARA require transparent environmental assessments, resettlement rules and freight-access provisions.
Employment evidence is also incomplete. Construction jobs should be separated from permanent skilled positions. The important questions are what functions workers perform, what training they receive and whether technical and managerial positions become locally sustainable. Without those measures, value addition may transfer environmental costs to African communities while financial and technological value is captured elsewhere.
Lessons from earlier commodity booms
Africa’s earlier commodity booms show why mineral wealth does not automatically produce lasting development. For example, Nigeria’s reliance on oil left public finances exposed whenever prices fell, while Zambia’s copper-led growth weakened after copper prices declined. The DRC faces a similar risk because copper and cobalt still dominate its exports.
Avoiding the same pattern will depend on whether African countries use today’s critical-minerals demand to build processing capacity, strengthen local industries and retain more value at home.
A regional division of labour
No mineral-producing country is likely to reproduce every stage of a complex global supply chain within its borders.
Africa’s Green Minerals Strategy, adopted by the African Union, places value addition at source, regional industrialisation and integrated mineral value chains at the centre of its approach.
The DRC-Zambia battery initiative provides a practical test. Agreements signed in 2022 and 2023 proposed transboundary special economic zones for battery precursors, batteries and eventually electric vehicles. A pre-feasibility study was reviewed and land identified, but no operating cross-border manufacturing chain had emerged.
Regional specialisation could allow minerals extracted in one country to be processed in another and manufactured into components elsewhere. But regional value chains depend on more than geography. They work only when countries have compatible regulations, reliable border systems, electricity, transport, finance, common technical standards and enforceable rules on local procurement and knowledge transfer.
From leverage to capability
The four cases provide a qualified answer to whether African countries are capturing more value from critical minerals. The DRC has shown that a dominant producer can restrict supply and influence prices. Zimbabwe has advanced from concentrate exports to lithium-sulphate production at one captive facility. The Angolan section of the Lobito railway has reached financial close, while TAZARA has moved into a signed modernisation agreement. Phalaborwa is designed to produce separated rare-earth products if the remaining feasibility work is completed, financing is secured and construction proceeds.
These are measurable departures from an extraction-only model. None, however, demonstrates broad African control over technology, ownership, skilled employment, intellectual property or final markets.
The real measure of success is whether price leverage produces public revenue, whether processing plants build technical knowledge and competitive local suppliers, whether transport corridors support diversified production, whether community costs are properly accounted for, and whether regional agreements become functioning industrial systems.
African governments have begun to alter the conditions under which minerals are produced, processed, and transported. The harder task is converting that leverage into industrial capability that remains after prices fall, investors depart, and the current geopolitical competition moves elsewhere.
